and presently, as he was sowing, some of the seed fell along the path; and the birds came, and ate it up.

routine walking wears ruts
where grandest opportunities
go to die

there is no need to glance down
where some little nothing
sparkles in dust

we know where we’re going
who it is that goes this way with us
habitual friends distract

survival takes all the time we have
in the end it all goes up in smoke
no rose smelling

what got them in the end
putting one foot in front of the other
not paying attention

No matter how controlling we attempt to be—birds!

Even in the midst of deep fertile soil on the prairie where mechanical monsters plow, plant, and cover all in one efficient movement, birds still gather for they know how to glean before a harvest as well as after.

When scattering seed a fistful at a time, the number of seeds available to the birds probably goes up. No matter how we construct our risks there are always scenarios where the seed doesn’t stand a chance from the get-go.

With enough cameras with high enough resolution to image an individual seed on its journey from hand to land, we could even come up with an average of how many seeds made it to germination within the bounds of the field. Your homework is to search YouTube to see if you can find examples of broadcasting seed and estimate how many seeds fall somewhere where they are immediately available to an alert seed-feeding bird.

From our life-journey so far we might begin to see where the best soil for growing is and where it is too well-traveled, mapped, and otherwise owned. Hypothesis: The best place to sow seed or to fish for people is among the desperate. Those who are poor with no access to the medical care of the day provide an easy place to start a movement to make things better. A not-great place to expect an increase is with the rich and powerful, either religiously or politically.

Even the best and most practiced sower of seeds finds there are places where learning seems to have stopped—in deep, dark, packed ruts. Just acknowledge this and keep sowing.

It is time for a story problem that connects with your life and not just numbers. The train leaving Station A is Your Life. The train leaving Station B is Paradise on Earth. A point of connection is already underway. Will you find this connection today?

We are going to begin very easy. There is no rush here. What do you know about farmers? Yes, they farm. What is a farm? Yes, there are plant farms and animal farms and fish farms. On a farm, what happens to plants, animals, and fish? Yes, they grow. You already know a lot about this story.

This is a story about a plant farm. Plants grow from seeds and those seeds need to planted. That’s pretty funny—plants need to be planted.

There are lots of different ways that seeds can be planted. This story is about a method called “sowing”. When you see this word it is not about female pigs. When you hear this word it is not about constructing clothes. Sowing is taking a handful of seeds and tossing them where you want them to grow.

The sower wants to get them as close to the edge of their field as they can. Wind is one reason some seeds might end up beyond the field where the ground is not good for them and they won’t grow. You might think about other ways the seeds could get outside the farm land.

Oh, yes, it will be helpful to know this story is best known by the smallest and poorest farmers for whom every seed is important if they want to eat for another year.

who knew such a lapping shore
harbored a category 5 hurricane
uprooting carefully tended certainties
making way for a new normal

A part of teaching fishing folk to “fish for people” is giving a model of connecting with those who are not them. This will come around again at Pentecost.

The setting is a boat (fisher-folks’ friend) but the content will mostly be about seeds (friends of villager and farmer). Teaching holds together the familiar and the strange long enough for them to engage each other.

We take the skills we have developed with us, but we are also careful to listen first to those we are with so we can use parabolic riddles and other rhetorical mechanisms that connect to those with whom we are relating.

A parable that doesn’t have a connecting spot with those you are partnering with is not a good use of conversation. Without a connection there can be no surprise or “Ah ha!” moment. It is these responses that shorten a longer metamorphosis or arrival at a repentant body, mind, and spirit.

Jesus’ use of parables uses common scenes of the time that are relatively easy to visualize. After nods of recognition and being able to project where the story is going, there is enough relaxation and letting down of defenses (a suspension of disbelief, if you will). Then comes the moment of a surprise twist bringing a crack in a person’s cosmic-egg habits (see The Crack in the Cosmic Egg: New Constructs of Mind and Reality by Joseph Chilton Pearce) so current assumptions about what is possible shift a bit, wobble a tad, and open space for a suggestion to alight on the edge of consciousness.

teachers teach in situ
never to a passing fad
mistaking facts for meaning

teacher’s plans anticipate
next opportunities built from here
to keep curiosity healthy

teachers stand on desks
sit in boats wander freely
to best meet a multitude of muses

teachers attend to listening
a whisper in an ear
a clear word ricocheting through a crowd

the shape of a moment
calls forth more
than a teacher already has

Yet another beginning. “Again” (palin) reminds us to pause and cast our minds back to previous lake settings of callings, teachings about Sabbath, and lakeside healings.

Again and again we go down to the sea where, according to E.E. Cummings:

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)

it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

Jesus’ musings about life (a future life available now) are about to tumble out in a series of parables that will put us at sea, trying to catch up and keep up with the images.

A part of our experience of wilderness is going in circles. Without a compass or other guide our tendency is to follow a leaning or habit and return to where we have already been. Parables assist us by having a surprise, beyond what we ordinarily see or think. If we are to season our tendency for repetition of the past with an increasing dose of a preferred future, shocks help lift our eyes.

Note that Jesus’ teaching is not oriented toward the passing of a written test. Given that testing is endemic to life and there are a multitude of reasons for not resisting a temptation, we are going to hear stories of ordinary items that will surprise us into reorienting our lives away from an old normal to a new relationship with the future—from fish to people, so to speak.

whosoever will
sets a wider welcome
that mysterious others might become
mutual friends

G*D’s desire is notoriously difficult to discern.

Additionally, there is the difficulty of forgiveness. Do we remain a certified partner or beloved of G*D regardless of whether we correctly discern and follow that desire with appropriate action?

Is there a universalness to our relationship that arches over and under any particular moment of agreement with or challenge to a desire? Where does bargaining fit in to the will of one partner or is this just a hierarchy playing at mutual identity reflective of interactive imagery?

These questions are important because of the tendency for such seemingly egalitarian sentiments to fall back into colonial tyranny exemplified by Rome and Temple. Later Christian history and attempted control of heavenly rewards will show this danger as real.

Mark tends to show Jesus as absolute authority of G*D’s “will” and authority is but a generation away from authoritarianism. Believers are infantilized to only go as far as the latest creed can travel. There is still insider and outsider language going on, just different insiders who argue over their place and look to some form of retributive justice they can use to their advantage. In a “second-coming”, power is held to judge who followed orders better and to wipe out those below a certain score. [Condensed from: Abraham Smith, “Cultural Studies: Making Mark” in Mark and Method, pp.203–207]

When hearing someone appeal to the “will of God”, it is wise to place finger-tips together, bow, say “True”, and continue beloving.

This chapter began with a deep look into those who questioned the healing of a withered hand. It is that same look that scans those present to delve into hearts and understanding.

That look shifts from finding a lack of compassion in the face of need to now seeing sparks being struck that connect previously scattered intersections of life.

Here, in this round, we are partnered in mentoring, mothering, and learning, brothering, with one another.

This dynamic of tender support and clear-eyed challenge is a very difficult way to go as followers stand on their caller’s shoulders and launch, pressing back and down for their quantum leap. This process is very difficult as mentors push their followers well beyond theory, all the way to learning from experience.

A second look, also reveals such difficulties having to be dealt with ever and anon.

This new family configuration will have the same question asked of them in days to come, “Are you still my mother? My brother?” Different responses will come forth. “Yes”; Messiah. “No”; Kiss. “Yes”; Distance. “No”; Run. “Yes” and “No”; Galilee.

who are my people
how are people known
what question comes first
is the oldest most basic

questions are more than sanguine
genetic coloring to intentional scarring
class caste craft
shape a decision field

no mater how we’ve come of age
there are more ages to become
my people stretch beyond the present
our station is not stationary

the deeper social location goes
the more comrades it unearths
bringing us back to basic clay
inviting imagination and play

yin finally shows through yang
there are none not mine
moveable blockages are removed
eu-angelistas build common ground

It has been a long journey from the region of the Galilee to the Galilee. How does one go home again?

Having experienced a baptizing prophet and a vision-ended quest with a new name of “Beloved”, life changed.

Having tested his change of life, his new incarnation, in a wilderness larger than his personal one, Jesus began an alternative collective.

The questions here ask who is associated with his coming of age. Who are the prophets who will guide? Who are the comrades who will risk testing?

If the Marcan Jesus were transported to Matthew or Luke he would recognize Mother Mary and her Magnificat as his mother leading him to Mother John. But Mark has a far darker story to tell of on-going testing. Here we are talking larger forces than individual qualities, of which family is one that keeps us wrapped in swaddling clothes. For instance, if Jesus listened to Luke, he would know of Mary’s treasuring him in her heart, making it difficult to let him go into danger that cannot be reasonably escaped.

Families come with a multitude of nuanced relationships that need reinterpreting, year by year, change by change.

Families bring old tapes and knows who has changed whose diapers. Families bring established support for next growth spurts. Families also have difficulty knowing how to shift the gears of roots to wings and back again.

Share this:

There was a crowd sitting around Jesus, and some of them said to him, “Look, your mother and your brothers are outside, asking for you.”

a crowd gathers for spectacle
soon there will be a you-and-them fight
that can be egged on to cathartic release
and we can all go back to our homes
to keep it alive through re-telling
until we need a next hit of circus

even better than Hatfield v. McCoy
an intra-familial throw down
mother against son and vice versa
brother and sister against a sibling
one against all winner disowning loser
we know this outcome all too well

we knew this was coming
now it has arrived
soon a trigger point will explode
fireworks will light the sky
tag team take your corner
purported hero over there

With an anxious family outside another packed house which has not yet had its roof removed, there is sufficient hubbub to disturb those still debriefing the aftermath of an energetically repulsed ambush.

The intrusion of the Jerusalem contingent into the family story suggests that the crowd was not just in a reflective mood but one agitated enough to be ready for another skirmish.

Wildernesses are also sandwiched, one included within another. There is no end to powers from the outside or confusion within. We are born into a world of rules and make up additional protective boundaries in response to difficult situations. Between these external and internal guides to which we give authority there is little room for listening to calls that act like strange attractors. We continue to attend to the chaos of too much information without a deep analysis of what needs disrupting or accelerating.

The fulcrum point identified by Jesus is that of healing which stands in contrast to curing symptoms and reveals the depth of disease within every power structure privileging mine over yours and one over many. Implicit in healing is the destruction of the captivating force. This force, in turn, ups the ante on dis-ease and destruction.

Jesus has been called out. Put down your calling. Remember you are from Nazareth, the center of “nothing good”. What can one person do, particularly if that one person is you? This is just a childhood fantasy like your story about turning a clay bird into a soaring eagle.

Share this:

His mother and his brothers came, and stood outside, and sent to ask him to come to them.

it takes awhile
for families to affirm
their embarrassing members

we will attempt correction
lapse into ignoring
justify our anger
intervene and exile

family status is powerful enough
to willingly sacrifice one
for the benefit of many

we will diminish and disallow
those who disappoint
all this may take a while
eventually it is the only solution

so we look to community belovedness
built on individual belovedness
to repent and trust belovedness

Having just completed a very contentious scene with power from Jerusalem, it is helpful to go back ten verses and skip over the interrupting story.

Life is never solitary. The very forces that oppose the liberation of captive people have an effect on a whole culture and extended family units connected to anyone upsetting their system. Jesus’ family is under the same pressure as Jesus and any follower of his.

This, like the encounter with the Pharisees from Jerusalem, needs to be seen up-close and personal.

Even though surrounded by select followers and a variety of crowds, Jesus is deeply alone. Family is deep relationship that ties us by blood to our tribal roots. Can you actually see Jesus turning his back on his mother who, with sisters and brothers and cousins by the score, wants to protect Jesus before he is grievously hurt by a seemingly immovable force.

How far do we have to go to commit someone for their own safety and that of others? We officially sign that they are “out of their mind” because they are “out of their place or status”. If only Jesus had gone to Pharisee school instead of to John!

There is ample evidence already given that Jesus is weakening a system of relationships that keeps at least a little stability in a time of wilderness occupation. Some sympathy and identification with the family is in order, for we have all made the same argument to slow-down or work within the system to someone when their call is disrupting some part of our own life. Mark eventually confirms the family has reason to look ahead and worry.

if you claim my spirit evil
let me show you how evil
even a holy spirit can be

this is no longer a spat
but has escalated to a spite
so there is nothing for you but a spit

roasting over ever-hot coals
puts Prometheus’ punishment to shame
escalate this line at your own peril

Legal experts rely on precedent. In this fashion decisions can be made that give either/or results. This is also the way that the evil of the ages is carried alongside whatever wisdom finally surfaced after ages of injustice showed its harm to all, privileged and unprivileged alike.

It is the misnaming of good as destructive that brought forth the above indictment.

Go back and jump directly from verse 22 to 30. This puts an important protection around verse 29 and our tendency to apply it inappropriately. Ministries of healing and justice are not blasphemous, but reveal a current unconscious or privileged blasphemy.

A note in the Christian Community Bible is much clearer about this than its successor, The New Christian Community Bible (how easy it is, little by little, to self-censor our prophetic self):

Those who systematically attribute bad intentions to good work done by others, by the Church, by other parties, sin against the Holy Spirit. The one who recognizes the truth but not God is better off than the one who says he believes in God and does not recognize the truth.

Into this life and death confrontation we have the equivalent of, “I’m rubber, you’re glue; your words bounce off me and stick to you.”

Eventually we will find that this is not a debate that can be “won” by verbal sparing in the short-run for it is as perennial as any of the seven deadly entitlements that keep showing up in lives not willing to come face-to-face with them—pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth. All that is available is to continue acting out of their corresponding virtues and accept that as enough—humility, generosity, wisdom, kindness, justice, mercy, and persistence.